I thought i would post an explanation as to why my posts have been lacking slightly recently

I have got pretty busy at work which has taken loads of my time up.. and unfortunately for me on way back from work someone decided to rear end my BMW pretty badly so im currently trying to sort it out! (im ok and the car is well…. we will see)

I’m just thinking happy thoughts at the moment.. hoping for the best and of course the dream of owning an E92 M3.. if anyone’s got one spare or wishes to donate the money to get one be appreciated:

For weeks now the audio in my E46 convertible was cutting in and out, I incorrectly assumed it was a loose wire. The truth behind this is more focussed on one downfall of the BMW/Range rover audio system.. the BM54 unit…

What is it?

The BM54 is an audio amplifier unit which sits at the heart of the audio system, its job is a bit more advanced then a standard car amplifier. it handles things like:

TMC – Traffic Message channel

Radio – Memory, signals

Car audio amplification/speakers (this is where the main fault lies)

Basically.. without this unit not much of your audio system will work (some might say its the single point of failure on the setup)

What happens?

These units are riddled with faults that can appear at anytime, most common faults are:

IC Amp Chip failure – These chips control the audio channels ( all 4) and will take out part of the speakers/eventually all of them.

This can also cause sound distortion/funny noises on the channels (such as ticking)

Loss of power/Not turning on – This will be signified by not having an orange light on the head unit/not being able to use the head units functions.

Intermittent power – Fully functioning system/sometimes not turning on

So what can be done?

The device itself comes at a premium price.. you have options but not many:

Ebay/Auction Sites – used units go for north of £300 (and can come with faults)

Replacement direct from BMW – BMW will sell you a refurbished unit for anywhere between £500-700

Get repaired/upgraded – This is your most viable and cheapest option (price will vary depending on needs, but no where near as expensive as the above 2 options)

Who can help?

The are loads of people out there offering upgrade and repair services but be careful.. some people see easy money in “soldering together” to repair these units and can cause more harm to your audio system if things go wrong.

When i was looking for a repair upgrade job on my BM54 unit i settled on one company who really impressed me both in quality and in uniqueness.

Cartronics (website)- They are a company based in surrey in the UK (company not one man in a shed with a soldering iron) with full professional soldering/testing facilities. They do a whole range of services including:

In house coding and software updates for ALL BMW models, retrofits for all models upto 2015 cars

ECU remaps

And much much more..

Mark is a very helpful and professional guy, who kept me updated and the whole unit was turned around in no time at all.

Options?

What people think is that its just a case of fixing the unit and that’s it… but its actually and upgrade in power and in quality.

Originally the IC audio chips are poor quality and run at roughly 20watts per channel with no additional external outputs.

A whole new IC chip setup is soldered in with its own power which can run up to 40watts per channel and is a much higher quality product. here is a pic that Mark was kind enough to send me showing the new board in place:

Press on image to see larger

As you can see i have opted for the additional RCA outputs if i wish to bypass the unit all together and run and external amplifier unit instead:

Press on image to see larger

The difference in sound quality is amazing, you find yourself turning bass down!

Well as per my quick previous post here i got a recall notice on my car.

I finally got to the bottom of the actual truth behind this, firstly don’t believe the standard BMW response that the dealers, customer support or anyone representing BMW are telling you. the response will no doubt be:

“just as a precaution measure we are replacing the airbag and due to parts shortage this cant be done till January 2015”

First Contact

First contact i made with BMW was a call to my dealer to establish what the letter means, as this was somewhat unclear. The letter mentioned the was a fault, said the parts possibly might not be there and to call various numbers, it then went on to say wait to be contacted.

I rang up my local dealer, I said i have a recall letter on my car and without hesitation or mentioning airbag the girl knew exactly what it was about and said:

“ahh the airbag, just as a precaution measure we are replacing the airbag and due to parts shortage this cant be done till January 2015”

So being rather relaxed about the issue i accepted the answer and that was that.

The truth/Information

Whilst eating some lunch i decided to Google a bit and unearthed a whole load of information mainly from the US about the faulty airbag made by “Takata” this was widely used in many car makes (Honda, Subaru and BMW) just to name a few.

The worrying fact in all of this is the story is old and it has been known about for years, it has been officially linked to about 6 deaths! (so why the delay BMW- cost maybe?)

Second Contact

Pretty scared for mine and other peoples safety in my car i got straight on the phone, this time to the customer support number who told me.. (yes you guessed it)

“just as a precaution measure we are replacing the airbag and due to parts shortage this cant be done till January 2015”

The person on the phone went on to tell me that the car is safe and its not the same part. (ohh really?)

I wouldn’t stop there this time.. i got on the phone to another BMW dealer and this time the mechanic/parts guy (yep i went past everyone else) told me on the phone the part in my car is “Takata” and that it will be the same recall as has been known about for years.

Third and final contact

Customer support email, whats even funny about this contact with BMW is the person sending the emails somewhat shot themselves in the foot they sent out a standard mail merge response email(about the airbag) and then tried to recall the email as i had this in my inbox:

“Recall: Customer Service [SRNUMBER=”

I wont put the full email as it contains my address and cars details but a few quotes from this:

“just as a precaution measure we are replacing the airbag and due to parts shortage this cant be done till January 2015”

About 6 months ago i started having fairly frequent random alarm triggers, very random.

Initially i assumed it was because i parked with the roof down sometimes.. but it started happening with the roof closed.

I had read on the internet that sometimes the under bonnet sensor/switch goes and being a cheap part was the most likely culprit. I went to the local BMW dealer and got a new switch (£12) fitted it and few days went by with no alarm.. finally fixed.. (or so i thought)

About a week later it started happening again! quite embarrassing for me now both my neighbours and my work were getting annoyed at the loud beep beep beep coming from my car. I frantically tried to research all the common problems and even rang up BMW for help neither came up with much.

I approached this from a technical point of view and quickly realised (after giving the car a good shake from outside) it was the internal alarm causing the problem. Now the internal alarm is microwave technology so my suspicions fell to this.

To turn off the internal movement sensor you can:

Press the lock button twice and this should flash the red light under the mirror for longer confirming this has been done

Few weeks went by (with no alarm going off) and my problem was “sorted” i got fairly busy at work so i sort of ignored this for a bit.

But one lazy Saturday i decided to try and fix the actual problem i got into the car, put roof down (shades on) and went to the local shop got a paper and drove back, i parked up at my house and locked the car (almost instantly the alarm triggered as i walked away to get a drink) hmm that’s odd.. the one time i didn’t double lock recently it triggers straight away.

I pondered this stood next to my car for a bit (think my neighbours thought i was mental) it suddenly occurred to me what i did was chuck the change from the paper into the centre cup holder slot.. surely this couldn’t trigger it?

I removed the change from car.. locked it and all was well.. suddenly everything for me clicked into place (the microwave sensor, the change and the fact i had replaced the centre storage with the cup holder 6 months ago!)

For next few weeks and even months.. i made sure i didn’t put any change or anything shiny in the centre cup holder and im happy to say my alarm hasn’t gone off since! (touch wood)

So when i first got my E46 325 convertible it came with 1 key (diamond shape) this worried me, i asked dealer local to me who sniggered and said it would be a “£150 custom order from Germany” to get another one. Not immediately needing one and slightly knocked back i declined and was back to square one..

I did hours of reading about it from all across the internet and now i have located the correct method for achieving a key and much cheaper.

Being a software developer/ general techie by trade i was not put off by the challenge!

Edit: I have had reports the software didnt open correctly so i have provided another setup..

Download and extract to a folder where you can see/use it for example your desktop

The first step is to plugin the AK90 using the provided usb cable windows should automatically detect and start drive install (im using Win 7) the unit will beep dont worry. It will fail on driver install at this stage thats only so we have the unit plugged in ready to be installed.

Run: AK90+ setup.exe hit next and install to default path.

Once finished you should see two icons appear on desktop:

At this stage you need to install the drivers and make the drive work so hit:

CP210x_USB.exe

Follow the install to the end and make sure “Launch the CP210x VCP driver installer” is selected, hit install and ok.

Replug the AK90 windows will now say the driver is installed.

Make sure to restart your pc to confirm the drivers/software install.

Step 3: Open Software and read key

Double click the AK90 icon on your desktop, the software should launch and you should hear it beep and click a few times.

This is good it means the computer has found the device on the com port and we are ready to go!

Lets test your key, place this in the slot in the AK90 programmer like this:

In my case this is the garage key/valet key im programming just to show everyone how to do it, i originally did this with the diamond key i purchased the process is the same.

Go back to the software and select “test key” this will read the data from the key and a box like this will pop up:

So as you can see the device has worked out its a key for EWS3/4 and doesnt currently have a VIN or any mileage data.. this is good it proves its a blank virgin key.

Here is my current diamond key tested(with my vin cut out):

So we have proved the device works and is talking to our computer now what? its time to program our blank key to the module we took out earlier.

Step 3: Connecting the EWS module to programmer

Take your EWS unit and open the top, this folds open like this:

The circuit board is held on the far side by the black plug the is 4 bits you have to push in and slide the unit out:

Now we take the connector wire for the programmer and carefully attach this onto the circuit board, in this case the wire has a big red dot on it. We need to line this up with the dot on the chip:

What i did was made sure that the connection between the chip and the connector was at its best is to make sure that every pin on the circuit board is bare metal. I scratched gently with a small blade/screw driver to make the connection good.

Make sure you note down the chip type in my case it is: OD46J (this is important)

And then connected the wire

Connect the other end to the AK90..

Step 4: the actual programming

Open up the AK90 software which should still be open from earlier and close the test key box you should just have a software screen that looks like:

With the blank key out of the slot and the EWS unit connected:

Select your chip type from the drop down that you noted down earlier mine was: OD46J